Another High-Tech Barrier Falls in South Korea

Hancom, the developer of a word-processing program known to Koreans as Hangul and foreigners as HanWord, said this week it will open up the product’s source code so other people can modify it for smartphones, tablet computers and other new gadgets.

South Korean software firm Hancom disclosed the file format specification for its flagship word processing program known as “Hangul”.

The program was adopted by the South Korean government nearly 20 years ago and has been a standard in most South Korean companies too, making the country one of the few places where Microsoft’s Office suite of workplace products has taken a back seat.

Nearly all documents by the government, except for those of Korea Intellectual Property Office, are Hangul files, which are known by their “HWP” file extension. Companies and individual users have to either buy the software or download a free ‘HWP viewer’ to be able to read them. A person could open Microsoft Word documents in the Hangul program, but not vice versa.

With the move, other software companies can modify their word processors to be able to open an HWP file and users will have greater control over government’s records by retrieving, opening and editing an HWP file on other platforms like Microsoft, Apple, Google or Linux word processors as well as in browsers and on smartphones.

“We have to convert government files, which sometimes run more than 100 pages, into a PDF file to send them to our offices in Hong Kong or Singapore. So if we are able to open it on Microsoft Word, it would relieve us of lots of work,” says Rhew Byong-wi, a 30-year-old office worker at a foreign bank branch in Seoul.

The voice for the use of open document format has been mounting and the government last month said it was considering a change in the status quo.

“There exists a danger where important government documents that should be kept for many years might be affected by the very existence of Hancom,” Shim Ji-yeon, the director of National Assembly Research Service said at a hearing in May.

Yang Wang-sung, CTO of Hancom says the company has made consistent efforts for software openness “regardless of government’s move.” The product’s “optimized functions” for domestic users will continue to attract customers, he said.

“The disclosure will allow the HWP to be more widely used and further developed in different environments, which in turn help ultimately enhance its competitiveness,” said Mr. Yang.

Microsoft tried to buy Hancom in 1998 but was turned away, partly by a popular outcry.

In another move to spur competition in high-tech products here, government officials last month ended restrictions on Web encryption technology that had the effect of confining online transactions in South Korea to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser.